Poets & Saints

Proverbs 3:5–8 (NRSV)  

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,  

and do not rely on your own insight.  

In all your ways acknowledge Him,  

and He will make straight your paths.  

Do not be wise in your own eyes;  

fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.  

It will be a healing for your flesh  

and a refreshment for your body.

I do not have to understand, 

I only need to remain.

St. John of the Cross  

“To come to union with the Beloved,  

seek not pleasure in anything created,  

but only in the Beloved who is hidden within you.  

The soul that is attached to anything,  

however much good there may be in it,  

will not arrive at the liberty of divine union.”

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John 14:16–20, 26–27 (NRSV)  

And I will ask the Father,  

and He will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  

This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,  

because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.  

You know Him, because He abides with you, and He will be in you.  

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  

In a little while the world will no longer see Me,  

but you will see Me; because I live, you also will live.  

On that day you will know that I am in My Father,  

and you in Me, and I in you.  

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,  

whom the Father will send in My name,  

will teach you everything,  

and remind you of all that I have said to you.  

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you.  

I do not give to you as the world gives.  

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I return to the breath  

and find that God was already here.

Henri Nouwen  

“Solitude is not simply a means to recharge so we can face the world again.  

It is the place where Christ remodels us in His image.  

There, we become who we truly are—  

not by striving, but by receiving.”

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Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, 11 (NRSV)  

For everything there is a season,  

and a time for every matter under heaven:  

a time to be born, and a time to die;  

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;  

a time to kill, and a time to heal;  

a time to break down, and a time to build up;  

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;  

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;  

a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;  

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  

a time to seek, and a time to lose;  

a time to keep, and a time to throw away;  

a time to tear, and a time to sew;  

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;  

a time to love, and a time to hate;  

a time for war, and a time for peace.  

He has made everything suitable for its time.  

Moreover, He has put a sense of eternity into their minds,  

yet they cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end.

I am not lost in time,  

I am held in the eternal now.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from *Letters to a Young Poet*  

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart  

and try to love the questions themselves,  

like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  

Do not now seek the answers,  

which cannot be given you  

because you would not be able to live them.  

And the point is, to live everything.  

Live the questions now.  

Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,  

live along some distant day into the answer.

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Lamentations 3:21–26 (NRSV)  

But this I call to mind,  

and therefore I have hope:  

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,  

His mercies never come to an end;  

they are new every morning;  

great is Your faithfulness.  

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,  

“therefore I will hope in Him.”  

The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,  

to the soul that seeks Him.  

It is good that one should wait quietly  

for the salvation of the Lord.

Grace comes quietly 

and fills me with breath.

Wendell Berry, from *The Peace of Wild Things*  

When despair for the world grows in me  

and I wake in the night at the least sound  

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,  

I go and lie down where the wood drake  

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.  

I come into the peace of wild things  

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.  

I come into the presence of still water.  

And I feel above me the day-blind stars  

waiting with their light.  

For a time  

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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Acts 17:24–28 (NRSV)  

The God who made the world and everything in it,  

He who is Lord of heaven and earth,  

does not live in shrines made by human hands,  

nor is He served by human hands,  

as though He needed anything,  

since He Himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.  

From one ancestor He made all nations to inhabit the whole earth,  

and He allotted the times of their existence  

and the boundaries of the places where they would live,  

so that they would search for God  

and perhaps grope for Him and find Him—  

though indeed He is not far from each one of us.  

For “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

This breath is Your gift,  

I am alive in Your love.

Julian of Norwich  

He showed me a little thing,  

no bigger than a hazelnut,  

lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed.  

It was as round as a ball.  

I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought:  

“What can this be?”  

And it was answered generally thus:  

“It is all that is made.”  

I marveled how it might last,  

for it was so small I thought it might suddenly fall into nothing.  

And I was answered in my understanding:  

“It lasts and ever shall because God loves it.”

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1 Kings 19:11–13 (NRSV)

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”  

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord,  

but the Lord was not in the wind;  

and after the wind an earthquake,  

but the Lord was not in the earthquake;  

and after the earthquake a fire,  

but the Lord was not in the fire;  

and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.  

When Elijah heard it,  

he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out  

and stood at the entrance of the cave.  

Then there came a voice to him that said,  

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Not in the noise, but in the quiet,  

that is where I hear You best.

Emily Dickinson  

Silence is all we dread.  

There’s ransom in a voice—  

But silence is infinity.  

Himself have not a face.

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Romans 8:22–27 (NRSV)  

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;  

and not only the creation, but we ourselves,  

who have the first fruits of the Spirit,  

groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  

For in hope we were saved.  

Now hope that is seen is not hope.  

For who hopes for what is seen?  

But if we hope for what we do not see,  

we wait for it with patience.  

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;  

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,  

but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  

And God, who searches the heart,  

knows what is the mind of the Spirit,  

because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

In silence and stillness, I am known—  

God meets me where words fall away.

Thomas Keating  

Silence is God’s first language;  

everything else is a poor translation.  

In order to hear that language,  

we must learn to be still  

and to rest in God.

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Luke 12:22–32 (NRSV, abridged)  

Jesus said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat,  

or about your body, what you will wear.  

For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.  

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap,  

they have neither storehouse nor barn,  

and yet God feeds them.  

Of how much more value are you than the birds!  

Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?  

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;  

yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory  

was not clothed like one of these.  

Do not be afraid, little flock,  

for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Even the lilies are held—  

so I will rest in the care of God.

Kahlil Gibran, from *The Prophet*  

Rest in reason. Move in passion.  

Go to your fields and your gardens,  

and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee  

to gather honey of the flower,  

but it is also the pleasure of the flower  

to yield its honey to the bee.  

For to the bee, a flower is a fountain of life,  

And to the flower, a bee is a messenger of love.

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Psalm 139:1–12 (NRSV)  

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.  

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;  

you discern my thoughts from far away.  

You search out my path and my lying down,  

and are acquainted with all my ways.  

Even before a word is on my tongue,  

O Lord, you know it completely.  

You hem me in, behind and before,  

and lay your hand upon me.  

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;  

it is so high that I cannot attain it.  

Where can I go from your spirit?  

Or where can I flee from your presence?  

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;  

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.  

If I take the wings of the morning  

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,  

even there your hand shall lead me,  

and your right hand shall hold me fast.  

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,  

and the light around me become night,”  

even the darkness is not dark to you;  

the night is as bright as the day,  

for darkness is as light to you.

You are closer than my breath, O God—  

I am never outside your presence.

Mary Oliver, from Thirst

Hello, sun in my face.  

Hello, you who make the morning  

and spread it over the fields...  

Watch, now, how I start the day  

in happiness, in kindness.  

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